Sufjan Stevens

"A self-taught musician, the young Sufjan Stevens pounded out elaborate Mozartian sonatas on a toy Casio, and by college became proficient on the oboe, recorder, banjo, guitar, vibraphone, bass, drums, piano, and other instruments too numerous to mention. Somewhere along the line he also started to sing, though at the time his friends didn't encourage it. He bought a 4-track tape cassette recorder and painstakingly composed 90-minute concept albums for The Nine Planets, The 12 Apostles, and The Four Humors. At that time, in college, the world loomed large and daunting, and Sufjan's music came to sound like a medieval woodwind ensemble waving swords and torches at the twelve-headed dragon of death. During his last semester in college, Sufjan pruned, picked, and assembled a selection of these songs to produce the inaugural release "A Sun Came" on Asthmatic Kitty Records, a home label Sufjan initiated with his step-dad Lowell. A thousand copies were manufactured and shipped to a dark, dank closet somewhere in the vacuous black hole of the universe, where they shifted and snored in their sleep for several years to come. No one seemed very interested. Sufjan went back to the 4-track, tired of "words, words, words," and set out to complete his most ambitious project to date: a collection of programmatic, symphonic songs for the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. There were no lyrics, but more than a few cymbal swells, flourishes on the oboe, and ambient organ drones, all accompanied by computer-generated techno beats, and digital noise. The result was enterprising, but not quite flattering. He sent a few copies to press, which fell on confused ears. "…A hyper-modified Atari battling a souped-up Colecovision in a chess match/battle royal," one writer noted. Feeling inspired, Sufjan dropped off a copy at New York's favored record store, Other Music, only to find it in the used section, reduced price, two weeks later. Sufjan took this as a compliment. His label did not. Write songs, his step-dad insisted. Write something with words and melodies. Sufjan went back to the books, mainly his own unwritten one. Taking bits and scraps of unfinished stories (character sketches, plot lines, penciled diagrams) Sufjan began to arrange his misshapen fiction into the bold mechanics of song, making friends with line breaks, meter, and rhyme scheme. These things led to melody, odd time signature, and a litany of jingle jangles on the drum kit, which had been taken out of storage once and for all. The result was something bold, flashy, and ripe with advertisement, like the Goodyear blimp, but not without Sufjan's tender rendering of the imagination. When all was said and done, Sufjan felt irrevocable changes taking place within his body, like a second puberty. His shoulders broadened, his mind quickened, his heart began to beat with quiet, patient thumps in a rhythm as fluid and faithful as the Chicago River." (asthmatickitty.com)


in short.. he is amazing and he worked hard to get there. listen to his music people!!